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The Korean War never ended. A conflict that took more than 60,000 American lives and eradicated more than a million Koreans ended in a stalemate. This is the folly of war; soldiers bleed and die for tracts of land that are rendered meaningless overtime. I do not write this to in anyway diminish the honor and valor of those who fought in past wars or are currently entangled in present conflicts. Yet as I praise the distinction of our soldiers and veterans, I mince no words in my abhorrence for the immoral wars our military-financial laden government keeps embarking upon for the sake of profits and crony capitalism.

Dwight D. Eisenhower warned us of this, of a corporate agenda run amok that has hijacked our government. There is a clear and present danger, a lethal enemy that is destroying America, but that enemy is within for the real terrorists are the plutocrats on Wall Street and the bureaucrats in DC who are hell bent on pushing the war that will end all wars. Past is prologue when it comes to the ways our government initiates wars. Never the ones to be seen as the initiators of wars, a pretext is always sought and manufactured by our government in order to push a reticent public into a war footing.

False flags have been the catalyst for almost every war that our corporate owned government has initiated since the Spanish-American war. An outright lie that the Spanish attacked us was the pretext as the sinking of the Maine battleship was used to push congress to declare war. A commission led by US Admiral Hyman Rickover concluded that there was no evidence of an external explosion and that the sinking was most likely caused by an internal malfunction. That did not stop the yellow press from screaming bloody hell in order to rile the public into action.

The Spanish-American war served as a marker for American interventionism that would see the rise of the very hubris the founders of America warned against. It was George Washington who admonished Federalists not to get entangled in the affairs of other nations. Not only are we entangled in the affairs of other nations, we are now the spider that keeps weaving webs of deception and disinformation in order to enmesh the world in perpetual conflicts. The Spanish-American war was nothing more than an excuse to kneecap the Spanish empire and replace Spain’s influence in the Caribbean and the Pacific as the 800 pound gorilla. Nothing more than bullying and tyranny; this type of intervention is antithetical to the American charter of freedom and liberty.

A noted Cuban historian, Guillermo Jimenez Soler, observed the pattern that our government uses when initiating wars. The same playbook that was used in Cuba has been used in almost every war since—including the Iraq war and the war in Syria that Obama started. Soler states:

“As would become its usual practice, U.S. intervention in the war was preceded by intensive press campaigns which incited jingoism, pandering to the most shameless tales and sensationalism and exacerbated cheap sentimentality. Joseph Pulitzer of The World and William Randolph Hearst from The Journal, the two largest U.S. papers… carried their rivalry to a paroxysm of inflaming public opinion with scandalous, provocative and imaginary stories designed to win acceptance of U.S. participation in the first of its holy wars beyond its maritime borders.”

Donald Trump, a lunatic with a deranged level of narcissism, is now pushing yet another war with North Korea. The war that never ended is about to flare up again as air craft carrier groups and battle ships are steaming near the Korean peninsula. This is eerily similar to the onset of the Spanish-American war. All it takes is one Maine incident for sparks to fly; except if the sparks fly this time around, the next development could very well be the extermination of the human race from the face of this planet.

Just like the Spanish-American war, our morally bankrupt yellow press mainstream media are pushing wars. This is what happens when there is a profit motive to news; the mainstream media from Fox News to CNN and all in between are willing to risk a global genocide for the sake of more clicks on their yellow press webpages and to inflate their P/E ratio. CNN is leading with an article about the belligerence of North Korea (link) and in the process laying down the pretext of war. The elites are following the blueprint of false flag lies to start yet another war—this time a missile that flies into the Demilitarized Zone could be followed up by ICBMs that envelope our cities in mushroom clouds.

We need to wake up as Americans and realize what is taking place. This is not a partisan issue for Democrats and Republicans are equally complicit in the ongoing crimes against humanity as both parties are responsible for the innumerable wars that are fought in the name of money and crony capitalism. Let me wrap this up by citing a quote from General Smedley Butler, the most decorated Marine in the history of America, who realized the duplicity of wars. Butler writes of the wars our government keeps declaring:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

I’m not going to feign some sort of counterfeit objectivity here the way vacuous mainstream journos always pretend to be doing. This is personal for me, I’ve spent the better part of the past two years vacillating between homelessness and stress. What I have encountered during this travail has been countless veterans who have been neglected by the very country they broke their souls to protect. In city after city, I kept running into homeless veterans who still love America even though our soulless government shoves them to the gutters when they are done using our honored soldiers. I wrote the poem “Silent Salute” (all the way at the bottom of this article) during this journey for my soul was too saddened by the plight of too many veterans. If we cut out one multi-billion dollar weapon system, we could house every homeless vet. Instead we spend money on weapon systems our military is not asking for in order to enrich defense contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton who I used to work for. When is enough enough!

Patriotism is not turning a blind eye to the excesses of our government and waving flags in the face of tyranny. The founders of this nation rose up against the excesses of the British crown because they grew weary of the corrosive governance of King George. Sadly, every revolution devolves right back to the tyranny that gave birth to it—America is no different. Thomas Jefferson said “our country is now taking so steady a course as to show by what road it will pass to destruction, to wit: by consolidation of power first, and then corruption, its necessary consequence”. We are embarking on steady course towards our destruction if we do not stand up to the thugs who are slow walking us towards our collective liquidation. #Pretext2Korea

“My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.” ~ George Washington

If you agree with this article and that we need to unite as a people to stop these unholy and sinister wars that are fought in the name of profits and corporatism, share this article on social media using #Prextext2Korea

Check out the video below about General Smedely Butler who was an American HERO and the very opposite of the cowards Trump and Obama who never served anything beyond their own egos.

After these many decades of bloody shameful government, and ‘news’media American Establishment lies, who but an outright fool would trust them now, regarding Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin, Syria, Iran, and Russia? Or: is it actually okay that only decades afterward is the truth being revealed to Americans, that America’s aristocracy and its agents had, decades earlier, perpetrated atrocities abroad (such as in Iran, Iraq, and Chile), and blamed the helpless victims for everything? Is it okay for the lies to be spread as ‘news’, at the time, and to become publicly known as having been lies, only decades afterward, when the history-books get written, and meanwhile for us to be voting for those thug-politicians all the while, whom the ‘news’media had deceived us into thinking to have been acceptable to lead us? This is ‘democracy’?

What about the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK — and what about 9/11? Who but an idiot today would still trust the official story about those events? Who SHOULD trust them? Should you?

Now, regarding specifically the alleged sarin gas attack that was allegedly perpetrated by Bashar al-Assad, on 4 April 2017, and that the U.S. regime is now also alleging that Russia, meaning Vladimir Putin, approved: Is that just another in the long and sordid history of U.S. government and Establishment lies?

Let’s consider the evidence on this matter:

First, read this. Did you click onto the links wherever you had any questions about the authenticity of the evidence in that article? After having read that, do you still believe the official story regarding this gas-attack, which could get the U.S. military into war in the battlefields of Syria against the Syrian government, and against Russia?

The time when it’s excusable to be a dupe of the U.S. government and its ‘news’media (which are controlled by the same lying aristocracy that controls the top politicians) is long-since past. Americans now need to know our government’s ugly recent history, and to understand today’s ‘news’ in light of it.

Then read this, and decide whether or not you trust the Trump-regime's allegation that «Russians had foreknowledge of the chemical attack» and that «Russia’s goal was to cover up the Syrian government’s culpability for the chemical attack».

I have worked with the intelligence community in the past, and I have grave concerns about the politicization of intelligence that seems to be occurring with more frequency in recent times – but I know that the intelligence community has highly capable analysts in it. And if those analysts were properly consulted about the claims in the White House document they would have not approved the document going forward.

I am available to expand on these comments substantially. I have only had a few hours to quickly review the alleged White House intelligence report. But a quick perusal shows without a lot of analysis that this report cannot be correct, and it also appears that this report was not properly vetted by the intelligence community.

This is a very serious matter.

President Obama was initially misinformed about supposed intelligence evidence that Syria was the perpetrator of the August 21, 2013 nerve agent attack in Damascus. This is a matter of public record.

President Obama stated that his initially false understanding was that the intelligence clearly showed that Syria was the source of the nerve agent attack. This false information was corrected when the then Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, interrupted the President while he was in an intelligence briefing. According to President Obama, Mr. Clapper told the President that the intelligence that Syria was the perpetrator of the attack was «not a slamdunk».

The question that needs to be answered by our nation is how was the president initially misled about such a profoundly important intelligence finding?

The U.S. ‘news’media hid from the public Dr. Postol’s disproof of the Obama regime’s still-continuing assertions that the 21 August 2013 sarin attack was from Syria’s government instead of from the ‘moderate rebels’ (jihadists) whom the U.S. supported. Will they hide from the U.S. public his disproof of the U.S. regime’s latest such scam backing the actual perpetrators of a war-crime — will they do now as they did then?

On 13 April 2017, I posted a news-report on the just-released detailed new investigation by Dr. Postol, of the April 4th Syrian gas-attack (linking, as I always do, to the original document), and submitted it to all of America’s large national-news media (and to most of the medium-sized and smaller ones, as well). I headlined it, «The Money-Quote from the Postol Report on the Recent Gas Attack in Syria». We shall see how many — if any — of the large ones do publish that news-report. (Just google the headline.) Nobody can say that America’s large ‘news’ organizations are simply ignorant of the reality on this vitally important matter.

Can anyone but a dupe be supporting Donald Trump, now? He may be a knowing and willing participant in these war-crimes, but among the American public, only dupes can still be supporting them in this decades-long effort by the U.S. aristocracy to overthrow the only person whom a majority of Syrians want to be their nation’s leader. The effort hasn’t succeeded, even after all of these decades trying, but is Trump really determined to be the person who would carry it to ‘victory’? How much would he want such a ‘victory’? Should the Americans who voted for him, view him, now, as a traitor, for having so quickly gone exactly against what he had promised when he campaigned for the Presidency? Certainly, he is a liar. But are his dupes remaining dupes? Time will provide the answer to that.

And, maybe, this time, Trump will offer a deal that can and will be rejected by everyone. Maybe his reach, finally, is exceeding his grasp.

The answer could come soon. But, clearly, the people who own America’s ‘news’media are almost 100% supportive of his 100% reversal on Syria, on Russia, and on World War III. And, the American public, if not as uniformly supportive of the American government’s war-crime — unprovoked invasion without even having provided any evidence to back up their asserted and by-now impossible-to-believe cause to invade, as America as the policeman, judge, jury, and executioner, for the entire world — are over 50% duped, even today, even after all those many decades of having been duped into invading countries that had never invaded us.

Regarding Syria, there is no way, now, that either side can back out and still keep its honor. For Russia, and for Syria, and for Iran, its honor is to never yield up its sovereignty. For the United States, its honor is: what is it? What it is, is to coerce the entire world to its aristocracy’s will, no matter what. That, today, is what remains, of America’s honor: international dictatorship, reigning through imposing fear worldwide.

Could this be the way to World War Three? Which side will back down? What if neither side will?

How does anybody make a deal with somebody like Hitler? WW III would be even worse than that — far worse. Is Trump like that? Is the aristocracy that he’s trying to please, so horrific as that? The evidence thus far is clearly yes. And, without a doubt, most Americans are their dupes (just like in 1933 Germany).

The American aristocracy, who are accustomed to winning, might feel that this is just another game, which they must, as always before, win. It’s actually no game at all; and, if they don’t cave soon, it’ll be lose-lose all around, even for the billionaires in their luxurious nuclear-proof bunkers, such as here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here. It’ll be all for naught, even for them — even for the super-dupers.

On April 15th 2017, the people of Kafarya and Foua were attacked, their children mown down deliberately, by a suicide bomb or expolosive detonation, that targeted these innocent children who had been lured to their deaths by NATO and Gulf state terrorists, including Ahrar al Sham and Nusra Front (Al Qaeda). Mothers had to watch from behind the windows of the buses they had been imprisoned in for 48 hours, while strangers, terrorists, picked up their children, their wounded, bleeding, mutilated children, and piled them up in the backs of trucks and Turkish ambulances before driving them away from the horrific scene and stealing them from their distraught, powerless mothers.

“This is Zeinab, she was forced to watch the massacre of 116 children through the windows of a bus while the NATO and Gulf state terrorists, collected the dead, dying and mutilated bodies of her community’s children and flung them in the back of trucks and Turkish ambulances, before driving them to Turkey. She has 10 members of her family still missing. She has no idea where they are.

She gave her courageous and emotional testimony to us in Jebrin registration centre, where the survivors of the 15th April, suicide bomb attack, were taken for shelter after this horrific event, described by CNN as a “hiccup”.

I speak about part of her testimony with RT yesterday who also used my interviews in their news feed. Unlike corporate media, RT investigate these atrocities and honour the voices of the Syrian people.

The Telegraph edited out this appalling and callous phrasing immediately after the RT interview.

The Telegraphdescribed the dead Syrian babies as “Syrian Government supporters” in an attempt to whitewash the UK Regime terrorist crimes by proxy and to erase the existence of these innocent children from our consciousness..by the familiar dehumanization process that we have witnessed every time the various NATO and Gulf state extremist carry out mass murder of Syrian civilians.” ~ Vanessa Beeley

Bombed out remains of one of the buses that had been carrying evacuated civilians from Kafarya and Foua to Rashideen holding centre. (Photo: Vanessa Beeley)

Vanessa Beeley, associate editor at 21st Century Wire, was present at the scene and provided video footage of the witness and survivor testimony to RT for use in the news section. She also spoke to RT about the heartbreaking accounts given to her by Zeinab, a mother, from these besieged Idlib villages of Kafarya and Foua, who had seen the carnage and who still has 10 missing relatives, who were taken to Turkey by the waiting ambulances. A full report, and subtitled video will follow shortly, when internet and time allows, but for now, here is the report from RT and the interview at the end of the report.

Eyewitnesses to the bomb attack on a refugee convoy near Aleppo that killed dozens of children said the militants lured people out of the vehicles with snacks before the explosion, and also stopped them from escaping the blast site.

A powerful explosion hit several buses full of people leaving militant-held towns and villages outside Aleppo last Saturday, killing over 100 people, including dozens of children, and injuring scores more.

Following the attack, Vanessa Beeley of the 21st Century Wire website gathered first-hand accounts from those who survived the assault. People told her that the militants did their utmost to increase the death toll. The exclusive videos she provided to RT shed more light on the incident.

“Just before the explosion, a strange car got from the militants’ checkpoint. They said they were bringing snacks for children,” the bus driver who was in the convoy said.

“Then they got out of the car and started shouting, ‘Who has children? Who has children?’”

The driver said the militants knew for sure that the children “haven’t seen biscuits and crisps for so long” as they were under siege. “People have been stuck in buses for 48 hours as the rebels didn’t let us out,” he noted. A woman said that she and other evacuees were held in the buses “like prisoners,” adding that they were only allowed to get out and stretch 10 minutes before the explosion.

Many people, including children, left the buses and approached the car when the blast hit the convoy.

One of evacuees said that the militants “were throwing potato chips on the site of the future blast. One of the terrorists said that it was food for the infidels.”

The driver recalled that “there were Ahrar ash-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra [Al-Nusra Front], and some factions of the Free Syrian Army [FSA]…”

According to another witness, “the Ahrar ash-Sham fighters didn’t hide their faces, while Jabhat al-Nusra were always wearing masks. One could only see their eyes,” one of the eyewitnesses said.

WARNING:Graphic and distressing footage from the attack ~

There were many foreigners among the terrorists – “Uzbeks, Turks, people from Chechnya, Saudis and Qataris. One could judge on their appearance; their language,” another evacuee added.

“When the blast rocked the area, people rushed into the woods but militants surrounded them and forced back to the buses,” the bus driver said.

A female evacuee recalled that “the militants told us that terrorists from another group were shelling our buses and that we must flee towards the bushes… but then they said that the bushes were mined and found ourselves trapped.”

Another woman also told Beeley that even before the explosion, four yellow Turkish ambulances were present at the scene for some reason. After the blast, the ambulances started picking up the dead and injured, only to take them to an unknown location.

“We don’t know where they [the children] are. They’re gone. There are no bodies. We’ve searched for them, but with no result,” one of the witnesses said.

Many relatives of those missing still know nothing of their whereabouts, other witnesses said. Some people told Beeley that the controversial White Helmets were also seen at the blast site, retrieving bodies of Al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham militants, but apparently leaving injured civilians.

Beeley, who has consistently covered the Syrian war, also filmed people’s testimonies about their escape from the rebel-held areas. The evacuees boarded the buses on Friday in the Rashideen neighborhood of Aleppo, but were not allowed out of the vehicles for nearly three days.

Many of them, however, were happy to leave as “this place turned into a terrorists’ hotbed,” one woman said.

[Some] international organizations have already condemned the attack on the humanitarian convoy in the strongest terms.

“We must draw from this not only anger, but renewed determination to reach all the innocent children throughout Syria with help and comfort,” said UNICEF’s executive director, Anthony Lake.

“And draw from it also the hope that all those with the heart and the power to end this war will do so.”

However, Beeley told RT that not many in the West followed the UN’s example in decrying the attack.

“We’ve just witnessed one of the most heinous crimes of our lifetime, and yet corporate… there’s no international condemnation from governments, from NGOs, from the media,” she said.

On the contrary, the media is making an attempt to “whitewash this utterly abhorrent” incident, in which, according to Beeley’s information, 116 children lost their lives.

I confess I really had hopes for some conscience from Trump about America’s wars, but I was wrong -- fooled again! -- as I had been by the early Reagan, and less so by Bush 43. Reagan found his mantra with the “evil empire” rhetoric against Russia, which almost kicked off a nuclear war in 1983 -- and Bush found his ‘us against the world’ crusade at 9/11, in which of course we’re still mired.

It seems that Trump really has no ‘there’ there, far less a conscience, as he’s taken off the handcuffs on our war machine and turned it over to his glorified Generals -- and he’s being praised for it by our ‘liberal’ media who continue to play at war so recklessly. What a tortured bind we’re in. There are intelligent people in Washington/New York, but they’ve lost their minds as they’ve been stampeded into a Syrian-Russian groupthink, a consensus without asking -- ‘Who benefits from this latest gas attack?’ Certainly neither Assad nor Putin. The only benefits go to the terrorists who initiated the action to stave off their military defeat. It was a desperate gamble, but it worked because the Western media immediately got behind it with crude propagandizing about murdered babies, etc. No real investigation or time for a UN chemical unit to establish what happened, much less find a motive. Why would Assad do something so stupid when he’s clearly winning the civil war? No, I believe America has decided somewhere, in the crises of the Trump administration, that we will get into this war at any cost, under any circumstances -- to, once again, change the secular regime in Syria, which has been, from the Bush era on, one of the top goals -- next to Iran -- of the neoconservatives. At the very least, we will cut out a chunk of northeastern Syria and call it a State.

Abetted by the Clintonites, they’ve done a wonderful job throwing America into chaos with probes into Russia’s alleged hacking of our election and Trump being their proxy candidate (now clearly disproved by his bombing attack) -- and sadly, worst of all in some ways, admitting no memory of the same false flag incident in 2013, for which again Assad was blamed (see Seymour Hersh’s fascinating deconstruction of this US propaganda, ‘London Review of Books’ December 19, 2013, “Whose sarin?”). No memory, no history, no rules -- or rather ‘American rules.’

No, this isn’t an accident or a one-off affair. This is the State deliberately misinforming the public through its corporate media and leads us to believe, as Mike Whitney points out in his brilliant analyses, “Will Washington Risk WW3” and “Syria: Where the Rubber Meets the Road,” that something far more sinister waits in the background. Mike Whitney, Robert Parry, and former intelligence officer Phil Giraldi all comment below. It’s well worth 30 minutes of your time to read.

Lastly, I enclose Bruce Cumings’s “Nation” analysis of North Korea, as he again reminds us of the purposes of studying history. Can we wake up before it’s too late? I for one feel like the John Wayne veteran (of war) character in “Fort Apache,” riding with the arrogant Custer-like General (Henry Fonda) to his doom. My country, my country, my heart aches for thee.